Chapter 15
Fifteen
I spend the rest of the week pretending Wednesday never happened.
Closing files like Dom asked. Avoiding Sharon’s suspicious glares. Texting Alex every hour because if I don’t, the ring around my neck starts to feel like a noose.
By Saturday, I’ve refreshed the missing persons database forty-seven times.
Fourteen blonde women missing in Philadelphia County.
Three in their twenties.
One who worked downtown.
None reported missing the exact night of the murder—they all vanished weeks or months ago.
Our Dahlia’s either not reported yet, or she’s someone no one’s looking for.
And now we’re here. Outside the place where she stopped existing.
Alex has an actual joint in her hand this time.
“You sure about this?”
“Absolutely not.” She takes a hit, holds it, passes it to me. “But we’re doing it anyway because we’re idiots with a murder board and a death wish.”
I take the joint. Inhale. Try not to cough. “Very on brand for us.”
“Right?” She grabs my hand—third time tonight. “You know what’s insane?”
“What?”
“I’m more scared of you going in there without me than I am of getting caught.”
My chest tightens. Not the ring. Something else. Deeper. I squeeze her hand. “Same.”
“Okay so we’re both idiots.”
“The best idiots.” I pass the joint back. “The kind that solve murders and probably die trying.”
“At least we’ll die together.” She flicks the joint into the street with unnecessary drama. “Paréa—you know, partners in everything. Crime and death included.”
“Very comforting, Alex.”
“I try.”
The weed is humming through my system now. Not enough to be stupid, just enough to take the edge off the fear and replace it with this floaty feeling that everything might be fine even though nothing is fine.
Which is probably the point.
“Come on, my guy’s waiting for us.”
“Your guy,” I say as we walk toward the next alley. “You have a guy at every club in Philadelphia or just the murder scenes?”
“Just the murder scenes. I’m very niche.”
This alley is bigger than the hookup alley—wide enough for delivery trucks and a dumpster the size of a small car. Also busier. Three people smoking by the service entrance, a couple making out against the brick wall, someone on their phone pacing and gesturing wildly.
The couple against the wall—her back pressed to brick, his hands in her hair. Consensual. Wanted. Everything Dahlia’s last moments weren’t.
The ring feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. I have to look away.
Definitely not made for discreet activities, this alley.
There are, in fact, specific hookup alleys in this city. Philadelphia has a whole infrastructure for poor decisions.
This isn’t one of them.
We walk past the line at the front entrance—easily fifty people deep, all of them dressed better than me and colder than me and definitely not investigating a murder—and head toward the service door around back.
Every woman in that line has done the math. Which shoes can we run in, which friends will notice if we disappear, which exit is closest. We don’t talk about it, but we all know. The ring around my neck is just proof of what happens when the math doesn’t work out.
The bass from inside the club vibrates through the sidewalk. Through my heels. Into my bones.
Alex pulls out her phone, sends a quick text, then leads me to a heavy steel door with peeling black paint. No sign. No handle on the outside. Just a door that looks like it hasn’t been opened since the Reagan administration.
Then it opens.
Alex’s on-again, off-again boy toy stands there. David. Of course it’s David. Alex collects Davids like some people collect frequent flyer miles.
“Hey, beautiful.” He lunges for her waist, fingers already grasping, that particular hunger of a man who texts “you up?” at 2 a.m. and actually expects an answer.
This is Alex’s superpower and her curse—making men believe they matter for exactly as long as she needs them to. I’ve watched her do it since high school.
Watched her perfect it in college.
Watched it hollow her out in tiny increments, like she’s paying rent on our friendship with pieces of herself, and I’m the landlord who keeps accepting payment.
Alex presses two fingers to his lips. Gentle. Devastating.
“That’s not what this is about.”
Then she pinches his lips shut.
Alex’s jaw tightens for just a second before she deploys The Look. Only I would notice. Only I know the cost.
His pupils actually dilate. It’s like watching a nature documentary on human mating rituals, except the gazelle is very into being eaten by the lion.
“We need to get inside,” Alex says, and David would probably walk through fire for her at this point.
I step away to give them space—not far, never far enough to lose sight of her. Not here. Not in this building where a woman died weeks ago because some man decided her body belonged to him.
David finally releases the door wider, gesturing us through with this little bow that would be charming if it wasn’t so pathetic.
The hallway hits me like a wall. Long. Exposed brick that’s probably original to the building.
Industrial lighting that flickers just enough to be ominous without being a fire hazard.
The air smells like grease and bleach and something else—cologne, maybe, or just the accumulated scent of a thousand Saturday nights.
My brain goes into that awful survival mode Mom always worried about—the one that got me through Dad’s funeral by counting ceiling tiles.
Emergency exit to the left. Could Dahlia have run that way if she’d seen it coming?
Door ahead leading to the main club. Did she dance first? Did she eat here? Order a drink? Feel safe?
Did anyone hear her scream?
Stairwell with concrete steps worn smooth in the centers. How many women have climbed these stairs thinking they were safe?
Everything is exactly how it should be in a functioning restaurant-slash-nightclub. And all I can think is that Dahlia probably thought it looked normal too. Right up until she followed the wrong man into the wrong alley and became a problem that needed to be solved.
“Club is downstairs and live music straight ahead,” David says, and I turn to see Alex’s lipstick smeared across his mouth like evidence. “Restaurant is on the roof with the rooftop bar, all enclosed. VIP lounge second floor.”
“Thanks, David.” Alex winks at him, and he blushes the same color as her lipstick.
“Find me later?” His voice cracks on the question. Hopeful. Doomed.
Alex ignores him and turns to me. “VIP?”
“Can we get up there?”
“Let’s check the rooftop bar first.” She heads toward the stairwell, leaving David to pout in the doorway like a kicked puppy.
My jaw aches suddenly. The same ache from every fake squeal about Winston.
“You okay?” Alex catches my expression as David disappears back inside.
“Are you?”
She knows what I’m asking. Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “It was three minutes, Dylan. I’ve done worse.”
“That’s not the flex you think it is.”
“I know.” She adjusts her lipstick in her phone camera. Won’t look at me. “But it gets us in.”
“Alex—”
“Don’t.” Soft. “Please don’t. Not tonight. We have a job to do.”
I want to argue. Want to tell her she doesn’t have to trade pieces of herself for access. But she’s already walking toward the stairs, and I know that set of her shoulders. The conversation’s over.
For now.
I really don’t want to climb stairs. But I do, in heels, because I have the calves of a goddess and also because stopping would mean acknowledging how terrified I am.
We emerge onto a rooftop terrace, and the city opens up around us.
Across from us are sectioned-off areas with privacy plants—probably where the VIPs sit when they want to pretend they’re not being watched.
To the right, food huts and a bar that’s three people deep.
To the left, more open tables with heat lamps and that carefully curated industrial-chic aesthetic that screams we’re edgy but also expensive.
Thirty, maybe forty people up here. Clusters of finance bros in button-downs with their sleeves rolled up.
A bachelorette party drowning in pink sashes and tiaras.
Couples on dates, leaning into each other.
Friend groups taking selfies with the Philadelphia skyline behind them—City Hall’s clock tower lit up like it’s keeping time on all of us, the Comcast towers glowing blue like they’re pretending to be art instead of capitalism.
Normal people having normal Saturday nights.
Weeks ago, I would have been excited to be here.
Would have texted photos to my mom.
Would have felt like I was winning at twenty-seven.
That girl’s gone now. No time to mourn her.
“Bar,” I say, because I need something to do with my hands and my face and the anxiety that’s threatening to crawl out of my throat.
Together we walk to the bar. My eyes scan every table, every face, looking for him. Fur coat guy. The man whose voice I memorized while standing in a dark stairwell listening to him confess to murder.
He probably won’t show up. Probably too smart to return to the scene. Probably at some event or charity dinner with an airtight alibi and a photographer documenting his every move.
Not even why we came here.
We came to see if anyone knows the missing woman he killed. To find someone who remembers her. To prove she existed outside of his confession and my nightmares.
It’s like discovery on a case with no file number—searching for evidence of a woman who was never officially missing, never officially murdered, never officially existed in any database that matters. Just a ring with blonde hair and my testimony that won’t hold up in any court.
But there’s no way I could have ever lived with myself if I didn’t at least check.
We sit at the end of the bar—prime people-watching position—and Alex orders for both of us without asking. Something with vodka. Something expensive that someone else’s murder money will eventually pay for.
The drinks arrive. We don’t toast.